Welcome to Gamebridge Unityversity. If it's your first night, you ''will'' develop a game.

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09/21/2013 Hi this is Bud, Game Designer. I am updating this page because it is woefully out of date. There are currently '''no''' planned events to my knowledge. However I am here quite often, just look for the orange jacket or ask any of the regulars.

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[[image:gamebridge.png|right|thumb|300px|The Gamebridge Unityversity Crest proudly displays the four [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rampant#Rampant Ponies Pissant] amid the cursors, buttons, d-pad and in the center is the Gamebridge Unityversity symbol]]

For those of you looking into starting game development there are a lot of engines available these days. However I only recommend 1 and that is Unity. Most of it's features are now completely free; including the function to launch commercial games on iOS. It is also becoming the industry standard for a variety of reasons.

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*'''UPDATE 3''': Hi, my name is Forest and I currently work for the company that makes Unity. I will be at NB for the Unity group on Aug 13 and Aug 20, and I'll also be around the space throughout the week. I wear a panda hat, so come talk to me about unity stuff!

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Such as:

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*'''UPDATE 2''': Alex is back to host Gamebridge again! Primer Labs has been on hiatus focusing on building Code Hero but now Code Hero is in beta and you can play it at Gamebridge to help you learn Unity3D programming.

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♠Lots of documentation, tutorials and even online classes from schools to learn Unity.

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[http://www.primerlabs.com Primer Labs] also has a new [http://www.primerlabs.com/codehero Code Hero] and [http://www.primerlabs.com/gamebridge Gamebridge] web site where you can get all these resources and more to learn game development.

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♥The ability to build once and launch on multiple platforms.

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*'''WHEN:''' We meet up on Monday nights from 6:00 PM till 10:00 PM and do game development at Noisebridge at 2169 Mission St..

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♦Relatively easy coding framework to learn.

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*'''NEWBS RTFM''': If it's your first night, you can make a game if you want. We'll help you get started. There's great tutorials to start with that will have you playing your own game in no time.

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♣Also as a designer it cannot be understated the usefulness of being able to play the game at any moment without waiting for a build cycle, and the ability for developers to list important features as Public Var's which unity will automatically look for and generate slider scales that designers can modify without having to touch the code base.

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*'''1337 DEVS HACK''': Bring your game projects and collaborate!

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♠Most importantly Unity has the largest user base. This is important because at some point you will need to work with others to make great games, and if everyone else is already using Unity they will not likely switch to your engine or preference....unless you pay them.

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♥The Unity asset store is another way for developers, artists and musicians to make money by creating game tools/assets. But it's also a way to develop your own games much much faster.

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'''Unity is a 3D engine, can it make 2D Games?'''

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Yes.

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'''Game Design Articles, Tutorials and more about Me'''

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Visit www.BudLeiser.com [http://www.budleiser.com]

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Note: Everything below this line is useful, but has not been updated in god knows when. I am leaving it here mostly for archival sake.

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*'''Gamebridge''': All kinds of game development are welcome at Gamebridge including different platforms, "non-technical" game artists, writers, programming styles and technologies.

*'''Gamebridge''': All kinds of game development are welcome at Gamebridge including different platforms, "non-technical" game artists, writers, programming styles and technologies.

Revision as of 16:25, 21 September 2013

09/21/2013 Hi this is Bud, Game Designer. I am updating this page because it is woefully out of date. There are currently no planned events to my knowledge. However I am here quite often, just look for the orange jacket or ask any of the regulars.

Just Starting? or "What Engine should I use?"

For those of you looking into starting game development there are a lot of engines available these days. However I only recommend 1 and that is Unity. Most of it's features are now completely free; including the function to launch commercial games on iOS. It is also becoming the industry standard for a variety of reasons.

Such as:

♠Lots of documentation, tutorials and even online classes from schools to learn Unity.

♥The ability to build once and launch on multiple platforms.

♦Relatively easy coding framework to learn.

♣Also as a designer it cannot be understated the usefulness of being able to play the game at any moment without waiting for a build cycle, and the ability for developers to list important features as Public Var's which unity will automatically look for and generate slider scales that designers can modify without having to touch the code base.

♠Most importantly Unity has the largest user base. This is important because at some point you will need to work with others to make great games, and if everyone else is already using Unity they will not likely switch to your engine or preference....unless you pay them.

♥The Unity asset store is another way for developers, artists and musicians to make money by creating game tools/assets. But it's also a way to develop your own games much much faster.

Note: Everything below this line is useful, but has not been updated in god knows when. I am leaving it here mostly for archival sake.

Gamebridge: All kinds of game development are welcome at Gamebridge including different platforms, "non-technical" game artists, writers, programming styles and technologies.

Unityversity: The Unityversity department focuses on Unity Engine collaboration and learning. Unity is free to make games with and absurdly easy to learn in a group environment like Unityversity where you can ask questions of your fellow developers.

Things To Bring

Pre-install Unity and some of the Unity tutorials if you can so you can get started right away with Unityversity.

iPhones, Androids & other cool game hardware devices for building games on

Connectors to hook your laptop to the big projector screen to show off your games and development processes to the group

Inspiration

Game development is a lot of fun. Game development is an awesome way to learn computer programming. And games can inspire players to learn all kinds of things about the world.

A lot of us are into game development and a lot of us would like to learn how, so it makes sense to get together and share our interests and experience.

The Open Primer Project

Some of us are working on an open-source game called Primer which uses gameplay to weave learning all kinds of useful things into an epic adventure through the history of the cosmos and the future of civilization.

Contact

If you want to know more about Game Development Club, just come by some time or contact Alex Peake at openprimer [atsymbol] gmail.com.

Meetup Log / Class Curriculum Courseware

Meetup History

We had our first meetup November 4th and it was a lot of fun. We made a game about evil companion cubes that want to give you a hug for very explosive definitions of hug.

Game Development Resources

Game Engines

Game engines make it pretty easy to develop games by giving you lots of development tools for world building and scripting.

We're interested in other kinds of game development too, including non-computer game designs like dice-based RPGs, board games and card games.

Unity

Unity is an awesome game development engine based on Mono that compiles for Mac, Windows, iPhone, Web and Wii with support coming soon for PS3 and XBox. Unity has just been made free for indy developers. Unity is an extremely easy to learn game development environment with a massively helpful developer community.

We are primarily teaching and collaborating with Unity in Game Club because it is incredibly awesome and easy to learn.

Unity On Ubuntu

Unity3D on Wine works with only a couple small bugs so you can create Unity games on Ubuntu too!

Unity-Tutorials.com has $15 tutorials on topics like particles, gizmos, character rigging, animation and Cheetah 3D.

Other Game Engines

Unreal

Unreal Development Kit is also available for free now. We'll no doubt be playing with that as well. Unreal is some seriously advanced game dev technology. It's too heavy to run on an iPhone, but it is a good way to make high-end PC and console games.

Objective C

Some people are making iPhone games directly in Cocoa.

Blender Game Engine

Blender Game Engine is an open-source game engine integrated with the Blender 3D studio software. It has come a long way in recent versions and some of the games people have made with it are amazing.

OGRE Open Source 3D Engine

OGRE is not a full game engine but it does have Mac, Windows, Linux and iPhone support. It has recently been used to make a big hit called Torchlight.

SDL

SDL is a cross-platform open-source game development library that has been used to make Aleph One based on the Marathon series.

Game Development Tools

Game development involves lots of tools for modeling, sculpting, texturing, rigging and animating game environments.

All CG Textures

3D Character Rigs

PAST UPDATES

UPDATE: Alex has been away from Noisebridge lately launching Primer Labs but Gamebridge is still open for anyone who wants to gather at Noisebridge to develop games and Alex will return with an expanded version of Gamebridge and more people to learn from in the very near future. Gamebridge will be much bigger than it ever was. Stay tuned.